FREIGHT  CAR 
EFFICIENCY 


By  ^ 

ERNEST  R.  DEWSNUP 

Professor  of  Railway  Administration 
University  of  Illinois 


From  the  Official  Proceedings  of  the  Western  Railway  Club 
April,  1908 


V 


FREIGHT  CAR  EFFICIENCY. 

Of  all  the  general  problems  of  railway  transportation  there  is  none 
more  important,  more  intricate  of  solution  than  that  connected  with 
freight  service.  The  efficient  performance  of  this  service  by  the, rail- 
ways has  become  absolutely  necessary  to  the  economic  progress  of 
the  community;  no  mean  part  of  the  social  superstructure  of  the 
modern  state  rests  upon  it.  Hence  there  emanates  from  the  public  a 
peremptory  demand  that  this  function  of  the  railroad  corporation 
shall  be  discharged  with  the  maximum  of  efficiency.  Inadequacy  of 
organization  or  incapacity  of  management  affects  not  only  the  reve- 
nues of  the  transportation  companies,  but  the  general  weal  of  the 
state.  It  is  claimed  even,  and  not  without  effective  argument,  that 
the  economic  and  social  loss  to  the  state  through  such  inefficiency, 
absolute  or  relative,  is  infinitely  greater  than  the  loss  to  the  trans- 
portation companies,  severe  though  that  may  be.  As  to  how  far,  in 
theory,  this  may  be  considered  to  justify  the  intervention  of  the  state 
may  well  be  left  for  discussion  by  the  theorists  with  just  the  note 
that,  even  theoretically,  the  moral  justification  of  such  interference 
must  rest  entirely  upon  the  presence  of  fairly  conclusive  evidence  that 
the  state,  by  its  intervention,  can  improve  the  situation,  with  due 
regard  to  both  present  and  ultimate  results.  In  practice,  however, 
the  public  is  not  apt  to  wait  for  moral  justification,  and  unsatisfactory 
management  leads  to  a  discontent  and  agitation  which  frequently 
crystallize  into  restrictive  legislation  of  a  more  or  less  severe  type. 
Aside  from  the  matter  of  earnings,  it  is  then  to  the  interest  of  rail- 
road management  to  discharge  the  functions,  for  which  it  is  respon- 
sible, as  adequately  as  possible.  Supreme  in  importance  among  these 
functions  as  the  freight  service  is,  public  attention  and  criticism 
have  naturally  been  directed  to  the  manner  of  its  discharge  in  a 
greater  degree  than  to  any  other  aspect  of  railroad  performance. 
The  public  demands  for  the  members  of  its  community  (a)  equality 
of  treatment,  and  (b)  a  service  characterized  by  adequacy,  expedi- 
tion and  economy.  The  problem  of  the  handling  of  the  freight  serv- 
ice is  obviously,  therefore,  very  complex ;  in  fact,  it  is  a  series  of 
problems  rather  than  a  single  one.  The  limits  of  this  paper  forbid 
any  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  whole  subject,  and  I  intend  to  re- 
strict myself  very  largely  to  a  consideration  of  the  more  general 
features  of  freight  car  efficiency,  noticing  the  extent  to  which  the 
railways  have  adjusted  their  equipment  and  its  handling  to  the 
gio^antic  industrial  development  of  recent  ye^rs. 


19338 

f 


The  general  prosperity  has  been  reflected,  of  course,  in  the  growth 
uf  railroad  business,  which  has  been  positively  astonishing.  The  rail- 
roads of  the  United  States  probably  handled,  during  the  year  ending 
June  30th,  1907,  in  the  neighborhood  of  1800  million  tons  of  freight. 
The  freight  handled  by  the  whole  of  the  railroads  of  teeming  Europe 
can  hardly  have  much  exceeded  1500  million  tons.  Physical  condi- 
tions, and  political  prejudices  and  fears  have  co-operated  in  keeping 
at  a  low  level  the  average  haul  in  Europe,  and,  consequently,  the 
more  favorable  environment  here  has  placed  the  ton-mileage — the 
true  measure  of  the  freight  service  of  a  country — out  of  all  com- 
parison with  that  of  the  older  continent.  During  the  years  named, 
the  ton  mileage  of  the  United  States  probably  amounted  to  230  or 
235  billions,  against  which,  Europe,  so  far  as  can  be  estimated,  could 
not  present  more  than  about  100  billions.  It  goes  without  saying 
that  enormous  difficulties  have  to  be  met  and  overcome  in  order  to 
administer  successfully  so  huge  a  mass  of  business,  diffused  over  a 
territory  of  more  than  three  million  square  miles.  But  the  real  ex- 
tent of  these  difficulties  is  not  reaHzed  until  it  is  comprehended  that, 
during  less  than  a  generation,  specifically,  since  1880,  the  ton  mileage 
of  this  country  has  not  merely  doubled  or  trebled  but  actually  sep- 
tupled itself,  an  increase  of  more  than  600  per  cent.  Under  these 
circumstances,  it  would  not  be  surprising  to  find  the  railroads  ex- 
periencing difficulty  in  meeting  the  ever-increasing  demands  being 
made  upon  them,  nor  would  it  necessarily  be  discreditable  to  them 
that,  in  shaping  their  organization  to  the  changing  conditions,  there 
resulted  considerable  friction  of  adjustment.  Accordingly,  the  ex- 
istence of  shippers'  complaints  with  reference  to  car  supply, 
founded  though  they  may  be  on  facts,  should  not  be  regarded,  in 
itself,  as  conclusive  evidence  of  culpable  negligence  on  the  part  of 
the  managers  of  railroad  transportation.  Even  without  any  special 
general  development  from  year  to  year,  every  business  has  difiiculties 
during  the  busiest  season  of  each  year,  in  properly  meeting  the  de- 
mands made  upon  the  resources  of  its  organization.  In  arguing  thus, 
there  is  no  desire  on  the  part  of  the  writer  of  the  paper  to  justify  the 
railroads  in  carelessness  of  management,  whenever  such  exists,  but 
his  object  is  to  deprecate  the  measurement  of  railroad  performance 
by  an  impracticable  standard,  which  the  critics  themselves  would  not 
consent  to  apply  to  their  own  business  undertakings. 

In  the  just-issued  nineteenth  annual  report  of  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission  on  the  statistics  of  Railways  in  the  United  States, 
figures  are  given  covering  the  results  of  railway  operation  during 
the  year  ending  June  30th,  1906,  and  a  comparison  of  them  with  the 
corresponding  figures  for  1900  may  serve  as  a  text  with  which  to 
introduce  what  I  have  to  say.  The  ton  mileage  of  the  railroads  op- 
erating in  1900  was  141,596  millions;  in  1906,  215,877  millions — an 
increase  of  52^  per  cent,  of  which  40  per  cent  occurred  during  the 
latter  year.  Though  the  mileage  increased  by  no  less  than  31,017 
miles  during  the  six  years,  freight  business  was  received  and  taken 


care  of  so  well  that  the  density  of  freight  traffic,  measured  in  tons 
carried  i  mile  per  mile  of  line,  mcreased  from  735,352  to  982,401  or 
about  35  per  cent.  The  mere  fact  that  the  railroads  were  able  to  take 
care  of  this  remarkable  increase  is  an  indication  of  the  entire  inap- 
propriateness  and  injustice  ©f  those  general  charges  of  inefficiency 
which  superficial  observers,  including  some  writers  for  the  press, 
have  felt  themselves  free  to  make.  So  great  an  achievement  has  been 
possible  of  accomplishment  only  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  past  free- 
dom of  development  (subjected  though  it  has  been  to  certain  re- 
strictions) has  stimulated  the  growth  of  the  most  enterprising  rail- 
road policy  in  the  world,  admirably  suited,  in  many  ways,  to  its 
economic  environment ;  it  is  not  denied  that  this  freedom  has  per- 
mitted some  evils  to  thrive,  though  less  during  the  last  few  years 
than  previously. 

The  freight  car  equipment  during  the  period  was  enlarged  from 
1,365,531  cars  to  1,837,914  or  34^  per  cent  increase.  At  first 
glance,  this  compares  unfavorably  with  the  52^  per  cent  increase 
of  business.  That  this  is  not  really  so  is  obvious  when  the  capacity 
of  the  car  is  taken  into  account.  So  far  as  I  can  judge  from  the 
equipment  statistics,  the  increase  of  average  capacity  from  1900 
to  1906  must  have  been  close  upon  20  per  cent.  Assuming  that 
this  increase  of  capacity  were  made  full  use  of,  the  increase  of  car 
accommodation  would  be  61^  per  cent.  The  enlargement  of  the 
freight  car  was  not  accompanied,  however,  by  a  raising  of  minimum 
weights,  so  that,  in  some  cases,  shippers  made  no  practical  use  of 
the  extra  space  facility.  Hence,  we  cannot  regard  the  whole  of  the 
61^  per  cent  as  an  actual  increase  of  facility  to  the  shipping  public: 
it  requires  modification  in  proportion  as  the  average  car  loads  shipped 
by  the  various  industrial  and  commercial  concerns  were  not  easily 
susceptible  of  increase.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that,  primarily, 
the  transition  to  higher  capacity  cars  is  in  the  interests  of  the  railway 
operator.  Subject  to  a  certain  amount  of  qualification,  it  may  be 
said  that,  under  normal  conditions,  the  shipper  prefers  smaller  cars 
and  more  of  them  to  larger  cars  and  fewer  of  them.  But,  in  either 
case,  the  practical  meaning  of  the  car  to  him  is  measured  by  the 
position  of  carload  minimum,  marking  as  it  does  a  very  considerable 
difference  in  transportation  charges.  Of  course,  in  the  long  run, 
under  a  competitive  regime,  the  shipper  is  deeply  interested  in  the 
high  capacity  car  proposition  because  its  utilization,  in  preference 
to  smaller  cars,  means  greater  economy  of  operation,  part  of  the 
benefit  of  which  is  likely  to  go,  sooner  or  later,  to  the  shipper. 

The  idea  suggests  itself  here  that,  while  working  towards  the 
higher  capacity  car,  the  railroads  would  be  unwise  to  attempt  to  im- 
pose it.  upon  the  shipping  public  unless  the  conditions  of  freight 
movement  were  favorable,  otherwise  considerable  inconvenience 
might  result  to  those  whose  business  .organization  and  relations  could 
not  readily  be  adapted  to  larger  units  of  distribution.  Thus,  if  in- 
crease of  car  capacity  were  the  sole  consideration,  an  increase  of  car 


4 


equipment  (but  not  of  car  numbers)  corresponding  with  the  growth 
of  tonnage  to  be  transported,  though  theoretically  a  desirable  achieve- 
ment, might  be  no  small  impediment  to  the  manufacturer  and  dealer 
in  their  efforts  to  attain  maximum  business  expansion.  It  is  to  the 
credit  of  the  far-sightedness  of  the  leaders  of  railway  policy  that, 
while  fostering,  for  several  years,  the  growth  of  the  larger  and  more 
economically  operated  car,  they  refrained  from  even  the  appearance 
of  coercion  in  connection  with  their  economical  utilization.  Thus 
from  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  the  increase  of  car  size 
steadily  proceeded,  generally  speaking  without  any  notable  sacrifice 
of  number,  but  the  carload  minimum  remained  stationary. 

The  last  general  movement  in  the  direction  of  increase  of  mini- 
mum carload  weights  was,  I  believe,  in  1899,  when  under  the  Official 
classification,  general  weights  were  raised  in  all  the  classes  from 
20,000  to  30,000  pounds,  after  having  stood  at  20,000  pounds  for 
third  class  and  higher,  and  30,000  pounds  for  fourth  class  and  lower, 
during  a  number  of  years.  At  the  same  time,  the  Western  classifica- 
tion minimum  for  lower  than  third  class  was  raised  from  24,000  to 
30,000  pounds,  four  years  previously  the  minimum  for  lower  than 
third  class  had  been  increased  from  20,000.  The  Southern  classifica- 
tion minimum  of  24,000  pounds  for  all  classes  has  remained  undis- 
turbed, for  all  practical  purposes,  during  the  last  twenty  years.  Re- 
cently, however,  a  movement  has  set  in  towards  an  advance  of  exist- 
ing minimum  weights,  to  accord  with  the  very  pronounced  advance 
of  the  last  few  years  in  average  car  capacity,  and  this  has  already 
found  partial,  though  not  very  startling,  realization  in  the  Official 
classification. 

The  policy  of  the  railroads,  it  is  plain,  has  been  marked,  in  this  re- 
gard, by  great  conservatism,  and  they  have  amply  showed  their  de- 
sire to  allow  reasonable  time  for  the  assimilation  of  shipping  meth- 
ods to  the  improved  car  facihties.  They  are  hardly  open  to  charges 
of  arbitrariness  or  inconsiderateness  in  now  attempting  to  take  an 
active  step  towards  the  realization  of  aims  long  announced,  looking 
to  the  more  effective  use  of  the  car  accommodation  they  have  pro- 
vided. If  there  be  any  room  for  criticism  at  all,  it  should  be  directed 
towards  the  actual  increase  of  minimum  weights  in  individual  cases 
with  regard  to  the  effect  of  the  same  upon  existing  methods  of  dis- 
tribution in  the  industries  concerned.  But  no  general  opposition  to 
the  increase  of  minimum  weights  simply  because  it  is  an  increase  is 
logically  well  grounded,  under  the  conditions. 

The  possible  effect  of  the  actual  organization  of  the  distribution 
of  products  in  hindering  full  use  being  made  of  increased  car  ca- 
pacity, secured  through  the  substitution  of  a  smaller  increment  of 
higher  capacity  cars  for  a  larger  increment  of  smaller  capacity  cars, 
has  now  been  considered.  It  may  be  further  observed  that  changes 
in  the  general  character  of  production,  while  not  preventing  full  use 
of  car  space  provided,  may  similarly  hinder  an  increase  in  car  ca- 
pacity, equalling  in  percentage  the  increase  of  business  to  be  handled 


5 


in  ton  miles,  from  establishing  an  equality  of  adjustment  of  freight 
equipment  to  traffic.  The  character  of  the  tonnage  may  have  altered 
so  that  equality  of  car  adjustment  can  be  secured  only  by  a  relative 
increase  of  car  capacity.  For  instance,  to  take  a  hypothetical  case 
of  as  simple  a  character  as  possible,  if  the  tonnage  at  the  beginning 
of  the  period  of  comparison  were  three-fourths  coal  and  pig  iron 
and  one-fourth  merchandise  and  hay,  whereas,  at  the  end  of  the 
period,  the  proportions  were  half  and  half,  each  cubical  foot  of  car 
space  would  be  less  efficient  on  account  of  the  greater  space  demand 
of  each  average  ton  of  freight  carried.  To  some  extent,  a  movement 
of  this  kind  has  been  in  operation,  but,  by  reason  of  the  continued 
marked  preponderance  of  heavy  freight  in  railway  tonnage,  probably 
not  sufficiently  to  reduce  very  materially  the  effectiveness  of  increase 
of  car  accommodation  calculated  on  nominal  capacity,  yet  it  is  worth 
bearing  in  mind  that  the  real  working  capacity  of  a  car  is  not  its 
stenciled  maximum,  or,  rather,  that  plus  the  additional  ten  per  cent 
allowed,  but  the  average  tonnage  it  can  accommodate  of  the  class  or 
classes  of  freight  it  is  commonly  required  to  convey. 

So  far  as  the  practical  results  of  American  freight  operation  of 
recent  years  are  concerned,  it  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  demonstrate 
that,  coinciding  with  the  movement  towards  a  high  tonnage  car, 
there  has  been  a  material  increase  in  average  load,  indicating  that,  to 
a  certain  extent  at  least,  such  a  car  has  proved  adaptable  to  modern 
methods  of  industrial  distribution.  To  quote  a  few  roads  indiscrimi- 
nately, the  average  carload  per  loaded  car  during  the  period  1900  to 
1907,  increased  with  the  New  York,  New  Haven  and  Hartford  from 

10.2  to  13.4  tons,  with  the  Norfolk  &  Western  from  19.9  to  25.5,  with 
the  Wabash  from  14.9  to  18.  i,  with  the  Louisville  &  Nashville  from 

15.3  to  18.7,  with  the  Illinois  Central  from  13.7  to  17.8,  with  the 
Southern  from  12.7  to  14.8,  with  the  Chicago  &  North  Western  from 
13.8  to  15.3,  with  the  St.  Louis  &  San  Francisco  from  13.6  to  15.9, 
with  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  from  12.7  to  15.5,  with  the  Northern  Pacific 
from  13.4  to  17.8,  and  with  the  Great  Northern  from  16  to  20.4 
tons.  According  to  the  1906  statistical  report  of  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission,  the  loaded  freight  car  miles  for  that  year 
amounted  to  11,410,599,327,  and,  as  before  stated,  the  ton-mileage 
to  215,877,551,241.  From  these  figures,  it  appears  that  the  average 
load  per  loaded  car  of  all  systems  was  18.9  tons.  It  is  impossible 
to  say  exactly  what  the  average  load  was  for  ,1900,  on  account  of 
the  failure  of  the  Commission  to  collect  and  publish  loaded  car  mile- 
age before  1901,  and,  ^  the  way,  their  Public  Service  tables  still 
neglect  the  average  load  per  loaded  car.  However,  the  average  load 
for  1901  was  16.5  tons,  and,  after  an  examination  of  the  reports  of  a 
considerable  number  of  railroads,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  for  1900, 
the  corresponding  figure  must  have  been,  approximately,  16  1-5  tons. 
Thus  the  increase  of  average  load  per  loaded  car  was  about  17  per 
cent.  The  proportion  of  this  increase  due  to  higher  capacity  equip- 
ment and  to  improved  loading  methods  respectively  are  not  capable 


6 


of  being  determined.  After  having  observed  loading  methods  fairly 
closely  during  the  period,  it  does  not  strike  the  writer  that  there  has 
occurred  any  particularly  marked  advance  in  this  direction.  The 
exceptions  to  this  general  statement  are  but  sufficient  to  ''prove  the 
rule."  Accordingly,  I  prefer  to  credit  the  higher  capacity  equip- 
ment with  the  greater  part  of  the  improvement.  From  1900  to  1906, 
then,  a  twenty  per  cent  increase  in  average  capacity  has  been  met  by 
a  seventeen  per  cent  increase,  or  thereabouts,  in  average  load,  indi- 
cating, as  already  remarked,  the  suitability  of  the  high  capacity  car, 
within  certain  limits,  to  present  industrial  conditions.  From  this  it 
follows  that  the  deduction  to  be  made  from  the  Giy^  per  cent  increase 
of  total  car  capacity  during  the  period  of  our  comparison,  on  account 
of  shippers  being  unable  to  use  to  advantage  the  extra  space  of  each 
car,  is  but  small,  and,  assuredly,  not  sufficient  to  reduce  the  per  cent 
increase  of  effective  accommodation  below  the  52^  per  cent  in- 
crease of  business. 

In  the  matter  of  adequacy  of  car  accommodation,  therefore,  I  fail 
to  see  how  there  can  be  any  reasonable  dissent  from  the  conclusion 
that,  under  the  unprecedented  boom  of  business,  the  railroads,  as  a 
whole,  have  done  astonishingly  well  in  keeping  their  equipment  level, 
and  probably  more  than  level,  with  the  rapid  increase  of  agricul- 
tural, mining  and  manufacturing  output. 

I  say  this  of  the  railroads  as  a  whole;  thus  qualifying  my  state- 
ment because  there  are  individual  roads  of  which  it  could  not  be 
made,  just  as  there  are  other  roads  of  which  more  than  this  could  be 
said.  Quite  a  few  railroads  have  not  only  managed  to  keep  level 
with  present  needs,  but  have  even  anticipated  future  requirements, 
evidently  determined,  whatever  the  cost  may  be,  to  provide  an  ade- 
quate amount  of  car  accommodation  for  their  patrons.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  would  appear  to  be  roads  who  are  not  indisposed  to  piece 
out  their  own  inadequate  car  resources  with  forced  loans  from  their 
more  plentifully  supplied  neighbors,  a  larceny  which  the  current  of 
traffic  hinders  these  good  neighbors  from  effectively  stopping.  The 
saying  attributed  to  a  certain  wit :  ''God  help  you  if  you  get  into 
the  hands  of  your  friends"  is  entirely  apropos  of  the  freight  car  sit- 
uation in  some  respects.  Curiously  enough,  some  of  the  roads  who, 
according  to  the  bulletins  of  the  committee  of  car  efficiency,  have 
been  maintaining  or^  their  lines  a  marked  excess  of  cars  (amounting, 
in  one  case,  to  fifty  per  cent,  and,  at  times,  to  a  hundred  per  cent 
over  the  number  owned), ^  have  really  not  done  badly  in  the  increase 
of  their  cars  during  recent  years  as  compared  with  the  increase  of 
their  business.  For  instance,  in  the  case  to  which  I  have  made 
reference,  the  company  increased  its  freight  cars,  during  the  seven 
years  ending  in  1907,  fifty-one  per  cent,  as  against  an  increase  of 
ton  mileage  of  forty-four  per  cent,  the  difference  being  still  greater 


^The  statement  refers,  of  course,  to  the  period  prior  to  the  present  abnor- 
mal depression. 


7 


in  favor  of  the  equipment  when  capacity  is  taken  into  account.  Its 
record  of  ton  miles  per  freight  car  in  1907  does  not  appear  excessive 
on  the  face  of  it,  when  compared  with  that  of  numerous  other  com- 
panies. Of  course,  the  explanation  of  its  persistent  retention  of  for- 
eign cars  lies  in  the  nature  of  its  tonnage  which  is  comparatively  light 
and  bulky,  thus  necessitating  a  larger  proportional  number  of  cars 
than  is  necessary  for  roads  with  heavier  freight ;  its  own  equipment 
was  evidently  inadequate  in  space  accommodation  in  1900  (possibly 
lethargic  car  movement  played  some  part)  and  the  improvement  ac- 
"  complished  subsequent  to  that  date  was  obviously  insufficient  to  re- 
duce to  really  moderate  proportions  its  demands  upon  foreign  equip- 
ment. The  light  and  bulky  nature  of  the  freight  carried,  occupying 
much  car  space  per  ton,  explains  also  the  moderate  car  ton-mileage 
record.2  The  unfortunate  feature  of  a  policy  of  foreign  car  detention 
is  that  it  necessarily  deprives  other  roads  of  equipment,  usually^  at 
the  time  when  it  is  particularly  needed,  so  that  the  whole  car  situation 
of  the  country  is  disturbed.  The  railroads  of  the  Middle  West  with 
their  extensive  forwarding  business  are  conspicuous  sufferers,  and 
the  roads  in  New  England,  on  the  Pacific  Slope  and  in  the  Southwest 
conspicuous  gainers  by  the  inter-line  shuffling  of  cars.  In  the  old 
days,  when  freight  was  transferred  at  every  junction  point,  it  was 
necessary  for  each  participating  carrier  to  own  sufficient  cars  to  haul 
the  freight  over  its  own  lines.  It  would  seem  proper  that  the  intro- 
duction of  inter-line  organization  should  not  change  this  require- 
ment. Of  course,  the  proportion  of  home  and  of  foreign  cars  on  the 
lines  of  a  railroad  will  be  determined,  to  a  great  extent,  by  the  direc- 
tion of  the  stream  of  traffic.  Lack  of  promptness  in  handling  foreign 
cars  will  soon  swell  up  the  number  of  such  upon  a  road  with  the 
stream  of  traffic  traveling  towards  it.  Given  a  fairly  dense  and 
growing  local  traffic,  substantial  moral  fibre  is  required  to  resist  the 
obvious  temptation — sometimes  the  moral  element  fails  to  make  good. 
On  the  other  hand,  roads  doing  a  large  outward  business  but  compar- 
atively small  inward  must  make  allowance  for  this  extra  drain  in  the 
extent  of  their  equipment.  They  must  expect  to  be  regularly  de- 
prived of  the  use  of  a  certain  proportion  of  equipment,  and  it  is  up 
to  them  to  do  the  best  that  they  can  to  keep  track  of  its  movements 
and  to  secure  the  enforcement  of  mutually  agreed  upon  regulations 
directed  towards  securing  prompt  return. 

One  of  the  difficulties  connected  with  per  diem  as  a  means  of  stim- 
ulating the  prompt  handling  of  foreign  equipment  is  that  at  the  times 

^Heavy  freight  would  have  revealed  a  striking  ton-mileage  per  car.  _  The 
car  ton-mileage,  at  any  one  time,  is  the  quotient  of  the  total_  ton-mileage 
divided  by  the  number  of  revenue  cars  owned.  In  general,  this  represents 
sufficiently  accurately  the  performance  of  the  average  car  on  the  normal  rail- 
road, but  not  in  the  case  of  roads  with  large  standing  excesses  of  cars  (or 
the  reverse)  ;  the  real  work  secured  by  such  railroads  out  of  the  cars  operated 
by  them  can  only  be  obtained  by  substituting,  as  the  divisor,  average  number 
of  cars  on  line  for  average  number  of  cars  ozvned.  Allowance  needs  to  be 
made,  of  course,  for  private  cars. 


8 


when  cars  are  in  most  demand  it  is  least  effective.  -Whether  the  cost 
of  car  hire  be  20,  25  or  50  cents  a  day,  or  even  a  dollar,  it  is  obviously 
to  the  interest  of  a  road  short  of  cars  to  retain  foreign  equipment  if, 
during  the  rush  of  business,  the  cars  are  capable  of  earning  more 
than  sufficient  to  cover  operating  and  per  diem  expenses.^  Con- 
versely, when  business  is  dull  and  cars  less  urgently  needed  by  the 
home  roads,  low  car  earnings  stimulate  the  effectiveness  of  per  diem 
to  the  cost  of,  it  may  be,  unnecessary  empty  mileage.  There  seems 
much  to  be  urged  in  favor  of  a  variable  per  diem  charge,  especially 
if  handled,  along  with  the  whole  matter  of  car  interchange  arrange- 
ments, by  some  permanently  organized  central  bureau  of  the  rail- 
roads. This  is  a  tempting  subject  to  dilate  upon,  but  one  impossible 
to  discuss  adequately  in  this  paper. 

Reference  to  the  problem  of  car  interchange  brings  our  discussion 
very  close  to  the  matter  of  car  shortages,  the  recent  acute  attack  of 
which  was  so  dramatically  terminated  at  the  close  of  last  November 
by  the  financial  crisis,  whose  industrial  effects  are  still  lingering  with 
us.  The  more  one  studies  the  car  situation  in  general,  the  more 
one  realizes  that  the  intensity  of  such  car  famines,  as  they  recur 
from  time  to  time,  could  be  materially  relieved  if  more  skillful 
attention  were  applied  to  the  supervision  and  improvement  of  the 
distribution  and  of  the  mileage  performance  of  cars  both  in  local 
and  in   interline  business,   the   crowning  difficulties  of  railroad 


^Suppose  that,  during  the  very  active  season  of  the  business  year,  a  car  is 
capable  of  earning  $2.50  a  day  after  the  costs  of  hauling  the  car  and  handling 
the  freight  (but  not  the  maintenance  charges  against  the  car)  are  deducted. 
The  railroad  has  more  business  than  it  can  handle  promptly  with  its  own 
equipment,  and,  therefore,  must  either  build  extra  cars  just  for  the  traffic  of 
this  road  or  it  must  borrow.  If  the  period  extends  over,  say,  three  months, 
then,  if  it  builds,  it  ought  to  debit  all  expenses  of  the  cars  to  that  short 
period.  These  expenses,  in  the  case  of  a  modern  car,  a  forty  ton  steel  under- 
frame  box  car,  for  instance,  probably  average  somewhere  about  40  cents  a 
day,  the  expenses  of  maintenance  and  renewals  being  distributed  over  the 
year,  the  car  being  assumed  to  be  in  more  or  less  constant  use.  The  estimate 
is  based  on  $1,025  as  the  cost  of  such  a  car,  with  20-25  years  as  average  life, 
5  per  cent  interest  on  cost  of  car,  $85  or  thereabouts  as  cost  of  repairs  and 
renewals,  allowance  also  being  made  for  maintenance  of  repair  tracks  and 
sheds  and  rip  tracks,  tools  and  the  like,  including  interest  on  the  capital  in- 
vested in  them.  But  in  the  case  before  us,  these  expenses  have  to  be  dis- 
tributed over  but  three  months,  allowance  being  made  for  lighter  repairs, 
longer  life  of  car,  etc.,  on  account  of  its  more  limited  use.  It  is  not  possible 
to  do  more  than  estimate  very  roughly  the  appropriate  charge  against  each 
day  of  the  earning  period  but  it  probably  would  not  be  less  than  $1.25  a  day. 
Thus  to  earn  the  assumed  $2.50  a  day,  the  railroad  must  spend  (and  could 
well  afford  to  spend)  $1.25  a  day  during  the  period  of  the  employment  of  the 
car  if  it  should  provide  its  own  car.  But  if  it  borrows  other  companies' 
equipment  for  the  period,  it  will  incur  hardly  any  maintenance  charges, 
probably  not  amounting  to  as  much  as  25  cents  a  day,  at  the  most.  So  that, 
under  the  assumed  conditions,  there  is  no  inducement  for  the  road  to  provide 
its  own  extra  equipment,  even  if  a  dollar  per  diem  were  levied  upon  it,  and, 
with  a  50  cent  or  75  cent  per  diem,  it  is  considerably  in  pocket  by  borrowing 
equipment  which  it  can  send  home  as  soon  as  it  has  no  further  use  for  it. 


9 


operation.  In  speaking  thus,  it  is  not  intended  to  have  inferred  that, 
under  any  reasonably  economical  system  of  car  equipment,  the  rail- 
ways could  obviate  such  shortages.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  charges 
of  gross  inadequacy  of  equipment,  so  freely  made  by  choleric  ship- 
pers during  periods  of  car  shortages,  are  based  entirely  upon  the 
»  reasoning  that  there  is  a  shortage,  that  the  railroads  have  no  business 
to  allow  a  shortage  to  take  place,  and  that  its  existence  is  sufficient 
evidence  of  willful  neglect  on  the  part  of  the  railroads  to  provide  a 
proper  amount  of  equipment.    No  consideration  is  given  to  the  rela- 

•  tion  of  that  equipment  to  business  requirements  during  the  periods 
when  surpluses  take  the  place  of  shortages  nor  to  the  possible  loss 
which  may  result  to  a  railroad  maintaining  an  extra  supply  of  cars 
whose  service  is  necessary,  perhaps,  only  three  months  out  of  the 
twelve.  Unless  the  daily  earnings  of  such  cars  during  the  limited 
period  of  their  necessary  service  are  sufficient  to  cover  not  only  the 
costs  of  handling  the  freight,  of  moving  the  cars,  of  use  of  roadbed, 
terminals,  motive  power  and  so  forth,  but  also  interest  on  capital  in- 
vested in  the  cars,  maintenance  charges,  depreciation  and  insurance, 
and  storage  accruing  during  the  whole  year,  it  is  patent  that  the  pro- 
vision of  such  cars  would  be  a  pure  act  of  charity  on  the  part  of  the 
railroads,  and  in  no  sense  a  commercial  transaction.  I  am  not  going 
to  assume  gratuitously  that  it  would  be  necessarily  unprofitable  for 
any  specified  railroad  to  provide  this  extra  equipment,  but  note  the 
possibility  as  something  that  needs  to  be  investigated  before  charges 
of  incompetent  management  are  rested  simply  on  shortages  in  car 
supply  during  busy  seasons.  And  in  connection  with  estimation  of 
car  shortage,  it  should  be  noticed  that  the  extent  of  the  same  is  not 
accurately  measured  by  shippers'  demands,  since  they  frequently 
order  more  cars  than  they  really  need  in  the  hope  of  securing  a 
larger  number  than  they  would  otherwise  be  likely  to  do.  The  actual 
shortage  at  any  date  is,  undoubtedly,  less  by  a  considerable  percentage 
than  the  total  of  the  shippers'  nominal  requirements. 

Moreover,  while  this  shortage  is  a  very  real  difficulty  at  the  times 
of  its  recurrence,  it  is,  in  large  measure,  the  result  of  a  tendency  on 
the  part  of  shippers  to  keep  their  stocks  down  to  the  working  mini- 
mum, frequently  involving  procrastination  in  the  ordering  of  their 
supplies.  An  annual  example  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  coal  trade 
in  which  the  dealers  regularly  fail  to  make  long  enough  preparation 
ahead  for  the  fall  trade,  so  that,  with  the  advent  of  the  cold  season, 

*  orders  for  cars  are  rushed  in  with  instructions  that  they  are  to  be 
treated  as  urgent.  They  (and  many  others)  are  anxious  to  combine 
all  the  advantages  of  keeping  as  little  capital  as  possible  tied  up  in 

,  their  stocks  with  an  absence  of  all  the  disadvantages  that  naturally 

attach  to  the  undue  crowding  of  business.  A  little  earlier  prepara- 
tion, even  if  at  the  expense  of  tying  up  more  capital  in  the  shape  of 
stocks  and  storage  facilities,  would,  in  many  cases,  be  entirely  reason- 
able, and  a  legitimate  expense  of  the  business.  At  any  rate,  if  this 
natural  organization  of  their  business  arrangements  is  not  attended 


!() 

to,  such  traders  hardly  ought  to  feel  aggrieved  if  their  aggregated 
demands  make  it  impossible  for  the  carriers  to  reply  as  promptly  as 
they  desire. 

From  what  has  been  said,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  rail- 
roads, on  their  side,  are  keeping  down  equipment  to  the  level  of  the 
traffic  of  the  least  active  seasons.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are 
providing  cars  in  marked  excess  of  this,  and  an  appreciable  portion 
of  their  equipment  is  lying  idle  or  running  light  during  the  '  'off"  sea- 
son. The  actual  extent  of  their  equipment  is  a  compromise  between 
the  requirements  of  the  periods  of  maximum  and  minimum  trade. 
The  railroads,  of  course,  will  continue  to  increase  equipment  so  long 
as  there  is  a  reasonable  profit  arising  from  the  receipts  of  the  car 
during  its  active  period  after  deducting  the  charges  against  it  dur- 
mg  both  active  and  inactive  periods.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  how 
more  than  this  can  be  expected  from  the  railroads,^  though  it  may 
happen,  in  consequence,  that  cars  demanded  during  only  three  or 
four  months  of  the  year  are  not  supplied.  Shippers  do  not  always 
realize  that  the  surplusage  of  cars  is  quite  as  important  a  matter  to 
the  railroads  as  shortage  is  to  them.  The  railroads  are  most  keenly 
interested,  naturally,  in  balancing  supply  with  average  demand, 
though  even  then  they  are  liable  to  be  hit  pretty  hard  by  business 
depressions,  as  witness  the  300,000  car  surplus  during  the  past  two 
months,  the  expense  of  whose  enforced  idleness  (if  cost  of  repairs, 
renewals,  insurance,  interest  and  storage  be  considered  as  distrib- 
uted equally  throughout  the  year)  can  hardly  have  been  less  than 
four  and  a  half  million  dollars. 

There  are  then,  difficulties  on  both  sides.  But  I  have  already  in- 
dicated that  shortage  evils  are  accentuated  among  the  roads  them- 
selves by  the  action  of  certain  companies  in  persistently  retaining 
and  improperly  using  the  equipment  of  other  lines,  thus  reducing 
the  pressure  upon  themselves,  but,  at  the  same  time,  causing  it  to  be 
more  widespread.  Per  diem  arrangements  so  far  tried,  though  an 
improvement  upon  the  old  mileage  system,  have  failed  to  bring 
about  an  equitable  distribution.  A  resort  to  car  pooling  methods 
really  appears  to  be  the  only  alternative,  if  economy  of  equipment 
is  to  be  a  consideration  at  all.  Granted  that  capable  administrators 
can  be  found  to  take  charge  of  such  pools — and  no  one  familiar 
with  the  official  personnel  of  the  railroads  would  deny  this — their 
influence  upon  the  car  situation  in  general  would  be  very  real.  Pos- 
sibly, there  could  be  established  district  pools  with  jurisdictions 
covering,  say,  Official  classification  territory,  Southern  classification 
territory,  the  Southwest,  the  St.  Paul,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Kansas 
City  and  Denver  territory,  and  the  territory  between  the  latter  and 
the  Pacific  Coast,  each  of  these  district  pools  focussing  in  a  central 
distributing  office,  which  would  receive  full  reports  from  the  dis- 


*In  the  matter  of  car  equipment,  that  is,  as  apart  from  the  question  of  car 
movement. 


II 


trict  pools  and  would  arrange  for  transfer  of  equipment  from  dis- 
trict to  district  when  necessary.  In  each  district,  the  pooling  prm- 
ciple  could  be  made  to  apply  separately  to  each  of  the  major  varie- 
ties of  cars,  and,  possibly,  though  the  practicability  of  this  is  not 
quite  clear,  with  a  rough  reference  to  their  capacities.  I  have  suffi- 
cient faith  in  the  genius  of  the  American  railwayman  to  believe 
that  the  details  of  some  such  plan  could  be  worked  out  satisfactorily. 
It  is  not  unnatural  that  reluctance  to  enter  into  a  car  pool  arrange- 
ment should  arise  from  the  dislike  of  some  roads  to  hand  over  the 
management  of  part  of  their  equipment  to  an  external  authority, 
and  from  a  fear  that  they  will  thereby  get  the  worst  of  the  transac- 
tion. Indeed,  it  is  very  likely  that,  during  the  formative  period  and 
early  operation  of  such  a  scheme,  equitable  distribution  would  fail, 
at  times,  to  be  attained,  but,  in  the  long  run,  it  would  surely  work 
out  to  the  general  advantage  of  all  the  roads  concerned,  except  m 
the  case  of  those  who  now  habitually  rely  upon  other  people's  sup- 
ply to  make  good  their  own  deficiences,  and  these  we  are  not  called 
upon  to  take  into  consideration. 

Before  concluding  this  paper,  I  should  like  to  supplement  the 
figures,  with  which  the  discussion  of  adequacy  of  car  equipment  was 
introduced,  with  one  or  two  more  relating  to  the  cognate  and  equally 
important  question  as  to  how  far  such  equipment  is  used  efficiently. 
We  have  seen  that  the  typical  car  of  1906-7  is  considerably  larger 
in  capacity  than  the  typical  car  of  1900 ;  it  is  also  performing  a  some- 
what greater  actual  service.  The  real  efficiency  of  a  freight  car  is 
the  resultant  of  two  forces,  if  I  may  borrow  the  language  of  Mechan- 
ics, one  the  average  load,  the  other  the  mileage  it  covers,  that  is,  its 
average  rate  of  movement.  Put  into  figures,  the  measure  of  this 
product  in  1906  was  117,450  ton  miles  as  against  103,700  ton  miles, 
in  1900,  an  increase  of  13,750  ton  miles  per  car,  equivalent  to  lyA 
per  cent.5  The  average  load  for  1900  has  been  estimated  at  16  1-5 
tons,  and  from  this  it  follows  that  the  loaded  miles  per  car  averaged 
6,285  •  in  1906,  the  corresponding  figure  was  6,208.  This  indicates 
a  backward  movement  so  far  as  the  "matter  of  car  movement  is  con- 
cerned. But  there  are  reasons  why  this  result  should  not  be  ac- 
cepted at  its  face  value.  By  reason  of  the  absence  of  proper  statisti- 
cal data  covering  the  whole  of  the  railway  systems  of  the  country 
during  the  years  of  comparison,  I  have  been  obliged  to  base  the 
loaded  mileage  performance  of  each  car  upon  the  number  of  revenue 
cars  owned  at  the  end  of  the  fiscal  years.  Obviously,  the  car  mile- 
age is  made  by  the  average  number  of  cars  owned  throughout  the 
year.  If  it  were  to  be  assumed  that  the  net  increase  of  cars,  during 
1900  and  1906  respectively,  took  place  uniformly  during  these  years, 
then  the  figures  given  above  would  be  changed  to  6,450  and  6,396, 
the  decrease  of  miles  per  car  being  thereby  reduced  from  77  to  54. 
In  dealing  with  the  comparison  of  individual  railroads,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  take  into  account  the  fact  that,  at  different  periods  and 
with  different  roads,  the  proportion  of  cars  used  in  making  the  mile- 


12 


age  to  cars  owned  may  vary,  but,  in  dealing  with  all  systems  col- 
lectively, this  is  obviously  unnecessary. 

A  further  reason  for  neglecting  the  apparent  decrease  in  car  mile- 
age lies  in  the  omission  of  privately  owned  cars  from  the  calculation, 
though  the  results  of  their  movement  are  included  in  the  record  of 
total  loaded  car  miles.  If  the  proportion  of  private  cars  were  the 
same  in  1906  as  in  1900,  the  net  decrease  as  shown  above  would  be 
slightly  reduced,  though  the  percentage  of  decrease  would  not  be 
altered,  of  course.  Private  car  statistics  are  not  available  but  I 
should  take  it  as  unlikely  that  such  cars  attained  quite  as  large  an 
increase  (relative)  as  railway  owned  cars,  and,  if  this  be  true,  a 
more  appreciable  reduction  in  both  the  absolute  and  the  percentage 
decrease  took  place.  For  instance,  private  cars  in  1900-1  were  esti- 
mated to  equal  from  seven  to  eight  per  cent  of  railway  freight  car 
equipment.  If,  during  the  following  six  years,  they  increased  but 
twenty  per  cent  in  number  as  against  the  thirty-five  per  cent  of  rail- 
way owned  cars,  the  net  decrease  of  loaded  car  miles  per  car  would 
be  reduced  from  54  to  19. 

A  still  additional  reason  for  modifying  the  result  first  arrived  at 
is  to  be  found  in  the  varying  nature  of  railway  tonnage  over  the 
period.  Coal  and  other  mine  traffic  tends  to  limit  the  mileage  per- 
formance of  the  cars  engaged  in  it  and,  when  such  traffic  increases 
more  rapidly  in  volume  than  the  rest,  the  effect  upon  general  car 
mileage  average  is  depressive.  Undoubtedly;  this  has  taken  place, 
to  a  certain  extent.  The  products  of  mines  in  1906  accounted  for 
more  than  53  per  cent  of  total  originating  tonnage,  whereas,  in  1900, 
the  proportion  was  slightly  over  52^  per  cent.  Mineral  ton  mileage 
and  car  mileage  figures  are  not  accessible  but,  no  doubt,  this  move- 
ment is  reflected  in  them,  and  though  the  difference  in  percentage  is 
hardly  large  enough  to  exert  much  influence  upon  the  average  per 
car,  it  would  probably  be  sufficient  to  wipe  out  the  decrease  with 
which  the  present  analysis  of  car  mileage  averages  started. 

It  is  satisfactory  to  find  that,  the  railway  freight  service  being 
taken  as  a  whole,  there  has  been  no  absolute  retrogression  in  the 
movement  efficiency  of  the  freight  car,  and  yet  unsatisfactory  not  to 
be  able  to  say  more  than  this.  The  efficiency  of  the  freight  car  of 
1906  over  the  car  of  1900  is  due  entirely  to  improved  load:  there 
has  apparently  been  no  appreciable  improvement  in  the  average 
number  of  miles  travelled  per  annum.  Except  in  so  far  as  the  trader 
was  able  to  secure  lower  rates,  a  supposition  hardly  justified  by  the 
facts,  the  benefits  of  the  increased  efficiency  of  the  freight  car  dur- 
ing the  period  1900-06  must' be  regarded  as  having  been  in  favor  of 
the  railroad  rather  than  the  trader. 

It  is  a  somewhat  remarkable  fact  that  the  power  and  ability  dis- 
played by  railroad  managers  in  so  many  directions  has  been  unable 
to  secure  tangible  improvement  in  a  matter  which  is  more  vital  than 
most  thinc^s  to  the  really  economical  and  successful  handling  of  a 
railroad.    In  scnnnin^-  the  results  of  freight  operations  during  the 


13 


half  dozen  years  covered  by  the  main  figures  of  this  paper,  one  may 
observe  with  pride  the  handHng  of  an  increase  of  business  of  52^^ 
per  cent,  with  a  train  mileage  increase  of  but  14  per  cent  (492 >^ 
millions  to  559^^  million  miles),  and  a  consequent  increase  in  train 
load  of  42  per  cent  (271  to  c.  385  tons),  accompanied  by  an  increase 
of  17  per  cent  or  more  (c.  16.2  to  c.  18.9  tons)  in  car  loading,  but 
car  mileage— the  less  said  about  it  the  better !  Perhaps,  it  is  incapable 
of  improvement !  But  the  query  is  inevitably  provoked  as  to  whether 
some  of  the  improvements  named  have  been  purchased  at  too  high 
a  cost.  The  bulletins  of  the  committee  on  car  efficiency  reveal  great 
differences  between  the  various  roads  in  the  mileage  results  obtained 
from  their  cars.  Unquestionably,  varying  physical  and  economic 
conditions  play  an  important  part  in  these  differences,  yet  one  can- 
not help  but  beHeve  that  the  personal  equation,  the  organization  of 
the  railroad,  is  no  trivial  factor.  To  take  but  one  illustration,  the 
reports  published  impress  one  with  the  idea  that  a  great  deal  of  rnis- 
applied  economy  is  frequently  exercised  with  regard  to  shop  repairs. 
No  doubt,  a  road  hauling  heavy  tonnage  over  adverse  grades  and 
around  sharp  curves  must  expect  to  be  troubled  more  with  the  ques- 
tion of  car  repairs  than  a  road  working  under  the  reverse  condi- 
tions. Yet  even  in  this  case,  the  loss  of  car  time  may  be  seriously 
increased  by  lack  of  proper  provision  of  shop  facilities,  usually  a  poor 
kind  of  economy,  and,  to  the  extent  to  which  shop  repairs  accumu- 
late, a  lessening  of  the  effective  equipment  of  the  road.  In  studying 
the  returns  covering  July  1906,  to  August,  1907,  one  is  surprised, 
again  and  again,  by  the  high  percentages  of  cars  in  shops,  and  high 
not  merely  during  the  period  of  slack  business.  Some  roads  appar- 
ently maintain,  during  the  major  part  of  the  year,  eight,  nine,  ten 
per  cent  of  their  freight  equipment,  or  even  more,  as  shop  ornaments. 
More  attention  needs  to  be  given  to  shop  policy,  and,  one  might  add, 
to  the  treatment  cars  receive  in  the  yards ;  with  the  needed  improve- 
ment, one  hindrance  to  better  freight  car  performance  will  be  re- 
moved. 

Yard  working  -affords  even  more  fruitful  opportunities  of  im- 
provement. Terminal  yard  delays  is  a  vexed  problem  that  is  appar- 
ently eternal  in  nature.  Poor  yard  design,  or,  to  be  more  correct  in 
many  cases,  lack  of  design,  has  been  condemned  again  and  again 
as  too  common  a  feature,  but  it  is  by  no  means  an  unknown  thing 
to  find  the  evils  of  bad  design  supplemented  by  those  of  poor  organ- 
ization and  still  poorer  management.  I  think  a  mistake  has  been 
made  frequently  in  locating  terminal  yards  too  near  the  centers  of 
the  cities,  though  sometimes  the  growth  of  a  city  has  been  so  rapid 
as  to  reach  out  to  fairly  distant  sites,  crippling  the  possibilities  of 
their  expansion  by  the  immense  resulting  increase  in  land  values. 
Again  the  storage  privileges  of  terminal  yards  have  been  notably 
abused :  to  judge  by  the  space  which  railroad  managements  are  often 
prepared  to  assign  to  storage  tracks  in  response  to  the  ''needs"  of 
the  shippers,  they  do  not  always  realize  that,  in  the'  physiology  of  the 


14 


yard  system,  the  function  of  the  storage  yard  is  about  that  of  the 
vermiform  appendix.  It  is  satisfactory  to  note,  however,  that 
demurrage  regulations  are  being  rounded  into  more  uniform  shape 
over  the  country  at  large  and,  with  their  steady  enforcement,  less 
trouble  from  shippers'  delays  can  be  expected. 

Much  more  could  be  profitably  said  about  the  influence  upon 
loaded  car  mileage  of  such  trans-shipping  arrangements  as  the 
Pennsylvania  provide  at  Fort  Wayne  for  the  making  up  of  "through" 
loaded  cars  at  that  point,  thus  reducing  the  pressure  upon  the  Chi- 
cago yards,  and  much  more  upon  the  general  extension  of  ''con- 
solidation" arrangements  in  relation  to  both  increased  average  load- 
ing and  mileage.  A  further  interesting  question  is  that  of  adequacy 
of  motive  power  and  the  desirable  ratio  of  such  power  to  freight  busi- 
ness and  equipment :  in  this  matter,  as  in  so  many  others,  there  are 
marked  differences  in  the  practices  of  the  various  roads,  the  justifi- 
cation of  which  it  would  be  desirable  to  have  explained.  These  and 
many  other  sides  of  the  question  of  freight  equipment  efficiency  must 
regretfully  be  excluded  from  a  paper  already  over-long,  but  I  hope 
that  some  of  the  speakers  will  favor  us  with  their  opinions  upon  these 
subjects. 

The  lack  of  progress  along  the  lines  of  car  mileage  is  in  such 
astonishing  contrast  with  improvement  in  other  branches  of  rail- 
road operation,  that  everyone  feels  that  something  should  be  done 
to  remedy  the  situation.  There  are  many  factors  contributing 
towards  a  low  daily  car-mileage  which  are  unavoidable,  but  advance 
along  the  lines  suggested,  and,  perhaps,  more  radical  measures,  will 
certainly  do  something  towards  raising  the  present  standard. 


ADDENDUM. 


The  previous  statisticaV  analysis  rests  upon  figures  covering  the 
operations  of  all  systems,  both  large  and  small,  during  the  years 
1900  to  1906.  It  will  be  interesting  to  see  how  the  general  results 
are  borne  out  and,  indeed,  emphasized,  over  a  larger  period,  by  the 
statistics  of  a  group  from  which  very  small  roads  are  excluded. 

These  are  compared  below,  in  the  case  of  thirty-one  railroad  sys- 
tems, some  of  the  operating  results  of  1907  with  the  corresponding 
ones  of  1897,  a  ten  year  period.  The  roads  whose  statistics  were 
available  are  the  following  (arranged  in  alphabetical  order)  : 

AGS  C.  C.  C.  &  St.  L.  K.  C.  S.  N.  P. 

A.  T.  &  S.  F.  and  P.  &  E.  L.  &  N.  ^enna.  R.  R. 

B  &0  CM.  &  St.  P.  M.  C.  T^o-kls. 

B  &M  C.  N.  O.&T.  P.  M.&O.  St.  L.&S.F. 

c'ofG  Frie.  Mo.  Pacif.  and  St.  St.  L.  S.  W. 

C  &  O  G.  N.  L.  I.  M.  &  S.  Southern. 

c'&e'i  G.  T.  N.  Y.  C.  &St.  L.  T.&P. 

C.&N.W.  I.e.  N.&W.  U.  P. 

WabTsh. 


•  s 

In  1907,  these  railroads  were  handling  considerably  more  than 
half  the  railroad  traffic  of  the  country,  and  hence,  in  spite  of  some 
prominent  omissions,  are  well  representative  of  the  more  important 
systems.  They  owned  538,830  revenue  freight  cars  in  1897  ^"^^ 
1,065,548  in  1907,  an  increase  of  97.8  per  cent.  In  calculating  the 
.  average  capacity  of  these  cars,  I  have  been  compelled  to  omit,  in 
1897,  the  L.  &  N.,  N.  P.,  Rock  Is.,  Mo.  Pacific,  B.  &  O.,  St.  L.  & 
S.  F.,  Southern,  C.  of  G.,  and  K.  C.  S.,  representing  a  total  of  140,074 
cars,  on  account  of  average  capacity  for  that  year  not  being  ascer- 
^        tainable,  but  I  have  added  to  the  list  previously  given  the  C.  B.  &  Q. 

with  36,469  cars.  For  1897,  accordingly,  the  average  capacity  has 
been  based  upon  23  roads  with  435,225  revenue  freight  cars,  having 
a  total  capacity  of  9,780,211  tons,  thus  giving  an  average  capacity 
of  22>^  tons.  For  1907,  I  have  had  to  exclude  four  roads,  the  L.  & 
N.,  C.  of  G.,  K.  C.  S.  and  Mo.  Pacific,  with  94,348  cars,  but  have 
again  added  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  with  47,164  cars,  making  a  net  total  of 
1,018,364  cars,  having  a  total  capacity  of  34,481,517  tons,  or  an  av- 
erage capacity  of  33.9  tons.  On  account  of  the  large  number  of  cars 
included  in  the  calculations,  the  omission  of  the  roads  named  cannot 
materially  affect  these  averages.  An  increase  from  22.5  to  33.9  tons 
represents' a  percentage  increase  of  50.7,  from  which  we  can  see. 
much  more  clearly  than  in  the  case  of  the  general  statistics  covering 
the  shorter  period,  the  really  great  advance  made  by  the  larger  and 
more  progressive  roads  in  the  direction  of  the  increase  of  car  ca- 
pacity. When  this  50.7  per  cent  increase  of  car  capacity  is  com- 
bined with  the  97.8  per  cent  increase  of  car  numbers,  an  increase  of 
198  per  cent  of  car  accommodation  is  shown.  How  does  this  com- 
pare with  the  growth  of  business  handled  by  these  roads?  The 
thirty-one  systems  handled,  in  1897,  53,046,151,280  ton  miles;  in 
1907,  136,037,276,970  ton  miles,  so  that  against  the  198  per  cent  of 
car  accommodation  there  has  to  be  set  only  156^4  per  cent  increase 
of  ton  mileage.  The  average  load  per  loaded  car  mile  was  13.4  tons 
in  1897,  and  19  tons  in  1907,  an  increase  of  41.8  per  cent.^''  This 
substantiates  the  statement  made  in  the  body  of  the  paper  that  there 
has  been  evidently  a  fairly  economical  utilization  of  the  extra  ca- 
pacity of  the  enlarged  car. 

With  respect  to  car  movement  figures,  the  3,901,494,854  loaded  car 
miles  of  1897  represented  7,407  loaded  car  miles  per  revenue  car 
owned.  In  1907,  the  7,143,781,875  loaded  car  miles  average  out  to 
^  but  6,704  loaded  miles  per  car  owned,  an  apparent  decrease  of  9>^ 
per  cent.  With  some  of  the  most  important  roads  included  in  the 
averages,  the  decrease  reaches  as  high  as  15^  to  19  per  cent.  As 
noted  already,  these  percentages  would  undoubtedly  undergo  reduc- 


^The  average  is  based  on  the  31  roads  named  in  the  list  with  the  exception 
that  the  B.  &  M.  could  not  be  included  in  the  average  for  1897  on  account  of 
the  absence  of  loaded  car-mile  figures  for  that  year. 


i6 


tion  if  adjustment  were  made  for  (i)  average  number  of  cars  owned 
throughout  each  year,  (2)  railway  cars  owned  but  not  on  lines,  or 
vice-versa,  (3)  average  number  of  private  cars  operated  throughout 
each  year,  and  (4)  proportion  of  coal  and  similar  car  delaying  traffic 
to  total  traffic.  It  will  be  understood  from  previous  remarks  that 
the  percentage  results  can  be  affected  by  adjustments  under  these 
four  heads  only  when  there  is,  in  any  of  the  cases,  a  percentage 
variation  in  the  years  compared.  Should  the  proportions  remain  the 
same,  the  percentage  of  decrease  could  not  be  influenced  by  such 
adjustments.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  roads  would  find  it  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  account  statistically  for  the  whole  of  the  de- 
crease. 


4 


